


Lost And Fixed

by royaletea



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: College AU, Hinata sweepts Kageyama off his feet, M/M, dorks being dorks, five times fic, it doesn't quite work that way, or so he tries to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-09 10:54:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3246959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/royaletea/pseuds/royaletea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>KageHinaKage. College dorm AU. Tobio is a coward and Shouyou thinks he can be the knight in shining armor.</p><p>(Or, in which electronics play matchmakers and Tobio suffers.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost And Fixed

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, Roy here. This is my first Haikyuu!! fic, let alone a KagehinaKage fic, so there might be ooc moments here and there, as I'm still learning the characters myself. All in all, I hope I kept their characterization consistent, because to me they're just silly adorable dorks who don't know how to communicate. Kageyama's oblivious to boot too, which is a nice plus. Anyhow, hope you enjoy~

_one._

It starts with a printer that breaks down ten minutes before Tobio’s class. Scrunching his nose, he slams his fist on the printer.

It lets a whirring noise, and then a beep, and then there’s an eerie silence that stretches on for too long as the dim glow on the screen dies away.  

“Fuck.” Tobio shakes the printer up and down in panic. “Come on, don’t do this to me when I need you the most.”

The printer ignores him.

After two minutes wasted on trying to unplug and then replug the power cord to no avail, Tobio gives up.

Slipping into his sneakers, Tobio rushes out of his room and down the stairs, and he’s about to turn the corner on floor one when he slams straight into someone with crash.

“Watch it—” Tobio says, grimacing at the pain rising up his his elbow, and stops when he realizes it’s Shouyou.

“Ugh, I think you broke my nose,” Shouyou rubs his nose with a thumb, slowly getting up on his feet, and Tobio is about to roll his eyes and brush past him, when he realizes that he just ran into his savior.

“Um, Tobio, your eyes just got really scary, so I think I’m going to slowly walk away—”

Grinning, Tobio grabs Shouyou by the back of his collar and drags him down the hallway—which is not nearly as easy as it used to be back in high school, because Shouyou has had something of a growth spurt and now rivals Tobio’s height— “You. Me. Room. Now.”

Shouyou lets out a squeak. “ _What?!_ ”

Tobio doesn’t let up, and stops at room 101 with a small wooden plaque that says _Hinata Shouyou,_  and shoves him into the door. “Open that. I need your printer.”

Shouyou flexes his arms out on a reflex to protect his nose, and groans. “You could’ve just said so.”

Tobio taps his feet impatiently as Shouyou fits his key into the knob and swings the door open.

“At least take off your shoes!” He wails as Tobio walks into the room, sneakers and all, headed straight for the printer, stepping on Shouyou’s clothes scattered all over the floor.

“They’re dirty anyway.” Tobio shrugs, prints out his five page essay and sixteen pages of color prints for his presentation, and leaves the same way he came in, kicking Shouyou’s sweatshirt on the floor with the nose of his shoe, and slams the door behind him without so much as a goodbye.  

Shouyou stares at the low ink warning flashing on his printer. “Wow, I feel used.”

-

Tobio’s printer continues being as broken as ever, making rattling noises and then fizzing out in a sudden death when he tries to print anything, so he gives it up as a lost cause and dumps it outside the high rise building near the trash heap.

Shouyou helps him carry it outside, happy to help his friend, until he realizes that means Tobio would be relying on him for printing duties.

He isn’t being stingy, honest—but Tobio is taking a mandatory writing class and he never finishes his daily essays, not until minutes before they’re due. Shouyou, an energetic soul and a five star athlete if he’d say so himself, can’t be expected to twiddle his thumb in his room, waiting for Tobio to finish his homework so he can print it.

So on a Thursday afternoon, after getting a string of texts from Tobio— _shouyou you dumbass, where the hell are you i need ur printer_ — _hurry i only have two minutes left before class_ — _I NEED TO PASS THIS CLASS ELSE I’LL BE KICKED OUT OF THE VOLLEYBALL TEAM_ —while he’s out in his cooking club, he stops by a key center and makes a copy of his key for two hundred yen.

“There. Happy?” Shouyou throws the copy into Tobio’s face over their dinner table at the dining hall, and grins with his mouth full of meatballs.

Tobio glares at the shiny key. “What is this?”

“My room key,” Shouyou answers, chewing slowly. “You can come in anytime if you need the printer! ‘Cus I won’t be in my room all the time and you know, it’d be bad if you failed your class and stuff.”

Blinking, Tobio stares at Shouyou as if he’d grown a second head. “So naturally, you’d give me your key.”

“It’s a spare,” Shouyou shrugs.

Tobio examines the key from four different angles, as if making sure it’s not booby trapped or anything, with a perpetual wrinkle on his temple.

“What if I steal something from your room? Set your room on fire?”

Shouyou snorts with a spoon in his mouth. “You’re funny.”

Frowning, Tobio gives the key another long stare before stuffing it in his pocket with a low muttered  _thanks_.

_-_

_-_

_two._

A month into the semester, Tobio buys a used mini fridge from an upperclassman that breaks down within the first week. Which is really too bad, because he already has stocked up on his groceries, and more importantly, boxes of green tea mochi ice cream from his favorite brand.

Tobio glares at the warmed-up fridge, taking out his mochi ice cream boxes and piling them up in a neat stack, mind reeling with what to do with these.

One, he can dump them, which is a waste of money, or two, he can finish them all now, and get a massive stomach ache for his efforts.

Which is about when his phone beeps, the screen flashing with a familiar number— _text message from_   _dumbass_ —and a third option presents itself.

So Tobio gives his infernal fridge a good kick and packs up his food things—eggs, microwaveable wraps, energy drinks, yogurt juice boxes, and mochi ice cream—in a wrinkled plastic box, marching downstairs to Shouyou’s room.

“Open up, Shouyou.” Tobio knocks on the door, three times, and pauses when there is no response.

Frowning, he checks his phone again, opening up Shouyou’s text he didn’t bother reading earlier— _Natsu’s visiting, gonna tour her around all day. Wanna meet up for dinner at the okonomiyaki place at seven?_ —and slaps his forehead.

He’s about to text him back, demanding him to come back to his room, when he remembers the spare key, resting securely in his jacket pocket.

He hesitates for about a minute, and then a brief thought of the eggs going bad—or worse, the precious green tea mochi ice cream  _melting_ —flashes into his mind, and well, Shouyou  _did_  say he can come in anytime he wants.

And so Tobio unlocks the door with a jiggling of the key, the metal warm against his fingers, and kicks off his shoes, kicking aside Shouyou’s socks and pants littered on the floor as he paddles over to the fridge by the window.

It is a lot bigger, apparently, which is a waste because he knows that Shouyou doesn’t cook at all.

It’s also predictably empty, aside from two half-full bottles of energy drinks, so Tobio doesn’t feel bad about taking up space as he fills up the compartment with his groceries.

When his plastic bag turns up empty, Tobio closes the fridge and trots back to his room, feeling accomplished as he hums a low tune under his breath.

-

The disaster happens two hours later, when Tobio is vacuuming his room and his phone vibrates from his hoodie pocket.

_From dumbass. 5:19 pm:_

_Omg dude you wouldn’t believe what happened. You know when you’re hungry and you know there’s nothing in your fridge but you keep checking it anyway?_

Tobio chokes on his breath as he remembers that he completely forgot to text Shouyou about using his fridge, and turns off his vacuum to frantically tap away on his screen.

_To dumbass. 5:20 pm:_

_SHIT DID YOU EAT ANY OF IT._

Biting his lip, he anxiously waits for a reply, and is about to call him back when his phone vibrates again.

_From dumbass. 5:22 pm:_

_Duh, THERE WERE WRAPS AND MOCHI ICE CREAM, YUM. You should come over and have some cus there’s only one left. Btw are we still on for the okonomiyaki dinner?_

Tobio lets out a dying cat noise from the back of his throat in despair.

-

In his defense, Shouyou hasn’t done anything wrong. It’s Tobio’s fault for leaving food in his fridge and expecting him to  _not_  eat it.

He apologizes anyway, because Natsu is here and Tobio is emitting a dangerously dark aura from across the table, chewing slowly on his okonomiyaki in a foreboding silence and probably scaring the hell out of his sister.

“Oh, I know!” Shouyou plasters on a grin on his face, waving his chopsticks midair. “This place has really good mochi ice cream. I’ll buy you those!”

Tobio slams his chopsticks on the table and looks away, face scrunched in an ugly scowl.

Shouyou takes it as a yes, and orders a serving of green tea mochi ice cream, observing with a grin from the corner of his eye the way Tobio’s frown lets up just a little bit, when Natsu tugs at his shirt sleeve and drapes herself all over him.

“Nii-chan, you never buy  _me_  anything.” She pouts with an whiny drone in her voice, burying her nose in Shouyou’s jacket. “You don’t even let me in your room without supervision. Why is Tobio-nii getting special treatment?”

Shouyou tries to shake her off with a disgruntled noise. “Because you’re nosy and you already get your own allowances from our parents,  _ow_!”

Natsu pulls at Shouyou’s jacket again, whining that  _he doesn’t love her enough, she’s his sister and how is this fair_ —and then stops, all of a sudden, with a strange glint in her eyes.

“Ohh, wait,  _I see_.” She says, mouth formed into an O in understanding, and gets off of Shouyou. “Psh, you should’ve just said so, nii-chan.”

“Said what?” Shouyou asks, uneasy and not liking the weird look in her eyes.

“Nothing!” Natsu giggles, slapping him on his back. “And here comes Tobio-nii’s ice cream! I think I’m going to the bathroom in the while you two eat.”

She pushes the chair back and skips away from their table, and Shouyou stares at her empty seat with a confused look on his face.

“What’s with her?”

Tobio shrugs, mouth full of mochi.

-

-

_three._

In hindsight, Tobio should’ve seen this coming a mile away, considering his history with electronics dropping dead when he needs it the most.

Darkness has seeped into the campus grounds, and he’s drenched in sweat and walking into the bathroom for a shower, after an intense round of volleyball practice. The muscles in his entire body are stretched thin from the bout of jumping around he did, and he’s really, really looking forward to that feeling of hot water drumming against his tired body.

A bath towel hung on his shoulders, Tobio grabs a change of underwear and flips on the bathroom light switch.

And flips it off. Flips it on. Off. On.

The battered bulb in the ceiling remains stubbornly unlit, and Tobio groans. Once is a chance, twice is a coincidence, thrice is a pattern.

Fourth is going to be a fucking habit, at this rate.

Checking his pocket for the familiar weight of the spare key, he heads straight to Shouyou’s room, uses his spare key, and helps himself to the bathroom, locking the door behind him.

The water is loud against his ears as he fumbles for the bathing products in the corner, blinking when he doesn’t find any hair product other than a bar of soap.

(Citrus-scented, like the way Shouyou’s hair smells every morning when they’re having breakfast together.)

Watching the soap bubble swirl down the drain, Tobio lingers in the bathroom before turning off the water and toweling his body dry.

It doesn’t occur to him that Shouyou might be back, and he steps out of the bathroom in just a towel, his sweatpants and shirt crumpled into a bunch in his left hand—and is surprised to find Shouyou on the bed, sprawled on his stomach with his laptop open.

“My bathroom light doesn’t work,” Tobio says in the way of explanation, and Shouyou looks up, and then—

“Gah, why are you not dressed?!” Shouyou screams, and covers his eyes with his hands.

Tobio raises a brow and bends over, shaking water droplets off his hair. “We showered in the gym together for four years in high school, dumbass,” he says, matter-of-fact, and throws his dirty clothes on the floor.

“Can I borrow a change of clothes to wear back to my room?” he asks, giving his arms a good stretch and working out kinks in his muscles. “I forgot to bring it with me.”

Tobio wrinkles his nose in confusion as Shouyou mutters a yes and fumbles off the bed, almost twisting his ankle on his land—which is strange, given his usual competence in jumping—and pulls out a white shirt and a pair of shorts from the second drawer next to the bed.

He throws the clothes in Tobio’s face and climbs back onto the bed, pointedly fixating on the laptop screen.

Tobio shrugs and pulls on the shirt and pants—same size as his, as Shouyou nearly caught up to Tobio’s height and body size towards mid-third year in high school—and waves a goodbye with a thanks.

“Yeah, anytime,” Shouyou says, voice pitifully small.

(Closing the door behind him, Tobio thinks he saw a tint of pink on Shouyou’s ears—the summer heat must be getting to him.)

-

Tobio is right: it isn’t long until pattern gives way to routine and habit, and this is how it usually goes:

He wakes up, at 6:00 a.m., does a thirty-minute morning jog around the campus, and has breakfast, sometimes alone and often with Shouyou in the dining hall. They part ways to head to class, and Tobio comes back to his room around lunch time to finish typing up his writing homework, and prints it out in Shouyou’s room.

****

(Shouyou is in his room, sometimes, playing a computer game or frantically cramming for a quiz because he can’t afford to be kicked out of the volleyball team either.)

After class is over, they hit up the gym for practice, and walk back to Shouyou’s room for shower. It’s usually rock-paper-scissors that decides who’ll get to shower first that day, which means Tobio usually goes second.

(Shouyou is a  _mean_  rock-paper-scissors player for some reason, even though it has to be dumb luck.

Dumb luck for a dumbass. How fitting.)

More often than not, because Tobio is a growing boy, he gets hungry past dinner, too, and trots downstairs to Shouyou’s room for his stash of food in the fridge. If he’s in a generous mood, he’ll share, because he can’t stand the way Shouyou tries to pull off the poor-starving-puppy look.

“That stopped working on you since you had your growth spurt,” Tobio snorts, and throws a carton of blueberry yogurt and a packet of granola in Shouyou’s face.

Shouyou’s face lights up as he peels the yogurt open. “I think it works on you, though.”

Tobio snorts, and kicks him in the knee.

(It should be alarming how comfortable he has gotten with this routine, but it really isn’t, on a lot of levels, because they’ve always been tight and what’s an inch more distance closed in the grander scheme of things?)

-

Here’s the thing: Shouyou is a nice guy, if he’d say so himself.

He genuinely likes being helpful, and without any ulterior motives—he knows he’s too much of a simpleton to scheme things like that—and if Tobio needs his printer, or his fridge, or his shower, he’d be happy to lend a hand.

Tobio was pretty awkward about it at first, which is hilarious—the first time Tobio used the spare key, Shouyou came back into his room midway, and Tobio was still waiting for the printer to finish spitting out his essay, looking like a deer caught in the headlights.

“I’m, uh,” he stammered, pointing at the printer, eyes darting frantically between Shouyou and his socked feet. “I needed to print, and you said I could come in, so.”

Shouyou laughed, and slammed his hand into Tobio’s back. “Yeah, I know. But I hope you didn’t step on any of my clothes on the way?”

Tobio grimaced and didn’t grace that with an answer, turning back to his printer, and since then, Shouyou has picked up on the fact that Tobio is pretty— _oblivious_ , in many ways.

For that reason, he’s easy to spy on, from the corner of his eyes over his laptop screen as he pretends to be studying for his English vocabulary quiz, sprawled on his bed as Tobio anxiously flips through his essay with long fingers in hopes of last-minute correction of mistakes.

(Tobio has always had long, skinny fingers, even back in middle school, and Shouyou once told Tobio he should try picking up an instrument, like the piano or guitar. But then it turns out Tobio is tone-deaf, so.)

The scary thing is, Shouyou doesn’t remember at what point he started  _noticing_ things, things that have always been in his routine but never struck him as anything special—just that he does.

Like the faint trace of an almost-dimple on the corner of Tobio’s face when they win a match, or the wrinkles in his hoodie and shorts he shows up wearing to breakfast—or the dissatisfied pout he makes when the dining hall doesn’t carry any curry.

Or how Tobio unconsciously tugs at Shouyou’s shirt after a shower and there’s a flash of skin that Shouyou kicks himself for noticing.

He has always had a bright outlook on life and on everyone around him, but if that’s not a rose-colored lense he’s looking through when it comes to Tobio, he doesn’t know what is.

Which is, well.

_Crap._

-

-

_four._

The next thing that breaks down is the phone, but that’s kind of Tobio’s own fault, so he can’t really blame the universe for it.

He can, however, yell at Shouyou who is stupid enough to trip on thin air in the gym during practice and crash into Tobio, who drops his phone and it flies out of his hand in a perfect parabola, landing in a broken heap a meter away.

“Shouyou, you  _dumbass_!” Tobio kneels on the sleek floor and gingerly picks up his phone, letting out a groan when he sees a giant, ugly crack on the black screen.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to!” Shouyou lets out a squeak and holds out both arms to shield his head.

Tobio reinserts the battery that fell out and presses the  _on_  button over and over, hoping that a cracked screen was all the damage his phone suffered.

Sadly, though, the screen remained black.

Tobio is about to grab Shouyou by the scruff of his neck to give him a piece of his mind—that phone was only three months old, damn it—when Kei appears from the locker room, sharply eyeing the cracked phone lying on the floor.

“How timely,” he comments, off-hand with that annoyingly satisfied look behind his glasses. “I mean, you’re so violent with your things. No wonder they’re breaking down on you left and right.”

“Shut up.” Tobio scowls, glaring up at Kei, who shoots him an infuriatingly knowing smile and bends his knee just a little to be at Tobio’s level.

“But just between the two of us,” he says in a conspiratory tone into Tobio’s ear, voice barely audible, “are you sure you’re not just trying to find excuses to latch onto Shouyou?”

Startled at the sudden proximity, Tobio pushes Kei away with a growl. “The hell?”

Kei shrugs, and stalks off with a wave towards the basket of balls on the other side of the gym.

“‘Cus you’ve been clinging to him an awful lot lately, and at this point one has to wonder,” he sing-songs, and then he shoots Tobio that damned look, tongue sticking out.

“Just offering the perspective of a neutral third party.”

Tobio kicks the nearest ball at Kei and misses by a mile.

-

It isn’t until around ten in the evening when he’s taking his phone apart in an attempt to fix it that the implication behind Kei’s accusation sinks in.

_“Are you sure you’re not just trying to find excuses to latch onto Shouyou?”_

Tobio’s knuckles turn white around the battery he’s holding, thinking how ridiculous the idea is in itself. Of course he wouldn’t break his things on purpose,  _just to get close to Shouyou_.

Why would he _want_  to get close to Shouyou?

(But he can’t deny that no matter the intent, it _did_  bring them closer than before—they used to be close, sure, but they were never attached at hips the way they are now.)

It’s kind of tiring, but also nice, to have someone as energetic as Shouyou around, because his idiocy is contagious as is his enthusiasm, and just.

Yeah, Shouyou’s a good friend, he’ll give him that.

(But then again, he’s always known that, so this isn’t anything new, despite what Kei said.)

Sighing, Tobio tries pressing the on button one last time, and gives up when the screen remains black, and stalks downstairs to Shouyou’s room.

“I need to call my mom,” Tobio says in an accusing tone, arms crossed, and the door opens, revealing Shouyou in his yellow cat pajamas and bunny fuzzy slippers.

“The passcode is 1010.” Shouyou hands Tobio his battered phone. “Just give it back to me when you’re done.”

Tobio nods, snatching the phone.

It isn’t until he’s back in his room on floor four that he notices that the screen has become lit, blinking with a new message from—

“Koushi-senpai?” Tobio blinks. He doesn’t mean to read the message, honestly, but it’s already popped up on the screen and his eyes have taken in the message in the split second he’s looked at it.

_That’s silly. Just ask her! Have a dinner together or something. :)_

Tobio stares at the phone, blood running cold in his chest.

Koushi  _would_  be a good person for love advice, he’ll admit that. He just—never expected Shouyou to be the one to seek love advice at all—because he never  _mentioned_  any girls when he’s with Tobio, not even once, and they’re  _friends_ , aren’t they?—and his mood turns sour all of a sudden at that thought.

Tobio sits still, wondering what the hell he should do because if he unlocks the screen now it’ll look like he purposely read a message clearly meant for Shouyou’s eyes only, but all the same, it’d look even stranger if he  _didn’t_  use the phone after borrowing it.   

And so Tobio swallows a lump in his throat, and dials.

-

Good thing Shouyou is an idiot, because he doesn’t think to question Tobio about texts when he gives his phone back half an hour later, and there’s nothing but static in Tobio’s mind as he settles back to his room and  _thinks_.

Clearly, their spheres have interlocked too much when it really has no place to, and Tobio has probably overstayed Shouyou’s kindness when it comes to using his things.

Mind made up, Tobio opens up his laptop and logs onto Amazon Japan, loading on his cart a new printer, a new mini fridge, and a new bulb.

(He doesn’t think about why it’s only now that he’s even thought of replacing his broken things.)

-

Two days pass by without Tobio showing up in Shouyou’s room for printing at lunch time as expected, and Shouyou realizes that something is wrong.

Tobio still eats lunch with him, and does homework with him, and they’re still a fantastic team in volleyball, but something is just—amiss. Damaged.  

Shouyou is sure that he hasn’t said anything or done anything different. Or has he?

It’s a silly thing to get worked up over—it’s just printing, after all—but his guts tell him that’s not the whole story.

“So you don’t have essay homework anymore?” he casually asks during volleyball practice that day, while they’re practising their spikes against the wall, and Tobio slams his ball with a little more force than necessary.

“Yeah, I do,” he says, breath short and uneven as he wipes sweat off his brow. “I got a new printer.”

And then he runs after the ball, and Shouyou is left staring at the wall where he’d just spiked into, left with a heavy sinking feeling in his stomach, which makes no sense—because of course it’d be  _logical_  for Tobio to get a new printer.

And then after practice, Tobio tells him that he also fixed his bulb in his bathroom, so he won’t be needing Shouyou’s shower anymore,  _but_   _thanks a lot for letting me use it for so long_.

Shouyou numbly stares at the back of Tobio’s head as he climbs up the stairs.

-

Two weeks pass in a similar fashion, and by then Tobio has long stopped coming to Shouyou’s room for anything.

It’s not that Tobio is acting any different, per se, at least not in a way that Shouyou can point out to him and ask  _why_ , which makes Shouyou anxious as hell, but at the same time, he can’t really think of what to say to Tobio— _hey, I think you should dump your printer and use mine instead_ would earn him a kick in his face.

All the same, though it’s maddening to keep quiet and pretend things are fine when they clearly are  _not_ , and he’s run himself ragged with anxiety by that Tuesday, when Natsu visits again.

Shouyou jumps on his feet when he hears the knock, and drags Natsu onto his chair.

“Okay, first off, how did you even know about my crush before I knew about it?” Shouyou demands.

“Nice to see you again, too, nii-chan,” Natsu says, dryly, and reaches over to open the mini fridge. “Oh, I see Tobio-nii hasn’t finished the mochi yet. Can I eat it?”

Shouyou pulls at his hair, letting out a frustrated noise.

“Yeah, whatever.  _How did you know?_ ”

Clearly, Natsu picked up on  _something_ in the air between Tobio and Shouyou, long before Shouyou himself realized it, and it could possibly be a lead to the answer to this mess going on right now.

“Oh, sweet,” Natsu smiles and tears the box open, and pretends to think the question over with a hand on her chin. “Oh, I’d say it’s a girl’s intuition.”

Shouyou rolls his eyes and snatches the mochi away from Natsu. “And what did your  _girl’s intuition_  say?”

Natsu pouts, crossing her arm. “You’re really gonna hold that hostage?”

Huffing, Shouyou puts on his best Tobio-scowl, hoping that it’ll have similar intimidating effects. “Watch me.”

Natsu shrugs, and flicks Shouyou on his nose. “Nii-chan must be desperate, huh? Did you two fight?”

Left eye twitching—damn that girl for being so sharp—Shouyou makes a show of throwing the mochi into the trash bin, and Natsu holds up both hands in the air.

“Fine, fine, I give,” she says. “I mean, you gave him your key, and you were so eager to please him at that restaurant, you know? And then there’s the way you look at him, and well. It seemed pretty obvious to me.”

A sense of dread fills Shouyou’s stomach. “Crap, was I that obvious?”

Natsu leaps for the mochi, and Shouyou lets her take it.

“To me, yeah. But to Tobio-nii? I don’t think so.” Natsu bites into the ice cream with a triumphant smile. “No offense, but I don’t think he’s the type to  _get it_  until you slam it in his face with a brick or something.”

Groaning, Shouyou drags his hand all over his face. “I  _know_ that. Which is why the way he’s acting now doesn’t make any sense.”

Natsu stuffs her mouth with the rest of the ice cream and throws the empty box overhand, missing by a wide margin.

“Okay, spill. So what happened?”

-

In the end, Natsu isn’t much help either. Shouyou kicks her out of his room the next day, dropping her off at the bus station on his way to class.

“ _Talk_ to him,” Natsu said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Or better yet, tell him how you feel! He’s really not going to get it unless you tell him, so what are you even waiting for?”

Which was about as helpful as platitudes like— _money can’t buy happiness_ —or worse— _think outside the box_ —because Shouyou had already done enough damage all by himself and drove Tobio away.

Why scare him away further with things like—his  _feelings_?

And so for the following weeks, Shouyou continues his silent ways, knowing but unable to say it, and Tobio continues his way too, in that awkward, polite way of his that keeps Shouyou at just about an arm’s length, never any closer.

-

-

_five back to one._

The pin drops about two months later, when Tobio is doing his last minute printing as usual, munching on a piece of bread for lunch as he gets ready to leave for class.

The printer suddenly makes a whirring noise with a beep, and a message pops up in the screen.

 _Out of ink_.

“Oh, shit,” Tobio curses, because this midterm essay is worth 40% of his grade and he’s definitely going to fail this class if he doesn’t have it printed and stapled with him.

(He hates that the first thing he thinks of his the spare key that he never got rid of, or had the heart to return.)

He has little choice though, because he values volleyball more than he values his pride, and so he uses the spare key for the first time in a few months, inviting himself into Shouyou’s thankfully empty room.

(It hasn’t changed at all—the clothes all over the floor are the same, the volleyball player posters are the same, and really, why did Tobio expect to see something different at all?)

It’s just his luck that the door starts rattling and Shouyou comes back, just as he clicks  _print_  on the computer.

Shouyou blinks in surprise when he sees him. “Oh, hey. What happened to—”

“It ran out of ink,” Tobio interrupts, face turning mildly red. “I’m sorry, but this essay is really important, and—”

Shouyou nods. “That’s okay. Feel free.”

And then a silence falls between them, as the printer makes rattling noises.

-

Shouyou has long come to understand that Tobio only keeps up with the bare minimum to pass his classes.

Which means he always writes five-page essays for his writing class—never less, because that’s the minimum page count—and never more, because that’s a waste of energy.  

Shouyou watches Tobio from the corner of his eyes as the second page is printed, keeping a mental tally because he is pretty sure that the essay today is going to be five pages long as well.

It’s an agonizingly long time to spend in this tense silence, but it’s also barely enough time to gather up the courage to say  _anything_.

Shouyou blankly stares at the back of Tobio’s head, counting two, three, four pages—just one more page until Tobio is done with his business here and leaves, probably not coming back—growing more and more anxious and suffocated and the air is uncomfortably hot in his room all of a sudden.

It’s when the printer sucks up the fifth page that Shouyou’s mouth opens without his permission.

“So I was thinking.”

Tobio turns around at the call, raising a brow, and Shouyou kicks himself for having said anything because he isn’t ready to talk  _at all_ —he doesn’t know what to say, and he hasn’t thought this through enough, but Tobio is looking at him so he has to say  _something_  and this is gonna end really badly—

“Er, so, I know I must’ve done something to drive you away the past few weeks. I’m sorry that I don’t know what it is,” Shouyou continues, and what is he even  _saying_.

Tobio’s eyes widen, just a tad, and he opens his mouth as if to deny it, and Shouyou holds up a finger and stops him, because he doesn’t want to hear Tobio say— _you didn’t do anything, Shouyou, nothing’s wrong_ —because that’s a big, fat lie.

“I know something happened that made you distance yourself from me.” Shouyou says, voice a little louder than before. “I like you a lot and it hurts me to see that I’ve driven you away, whatever it is that I did.”

Tobio makes a noise at the back of his throat, and Shouyou finds his words growing bolder as he realizes that he’s hit closer to home than he’s expected.

“I tried thinking over it, but I can’t pinpoint anything on my own. I—okay, so my point is, I really like you, maybe more than I even realize, and I don’t like how distant we’ve become. So—”

Shouyou reaches up—not by much, now that they’re pretty equal in height—and gently presses his mouth against Tobio’s, who has frozen on his spot, and winds his hands around the back of Tobio’s head, angling him just so, and it’s everything that he has imagined and nothing he could’ve ever imagined.

Finding that he’s running out of breath, feeling hot sparks running down his spine, Shouyou pulls back, carefully watching Tobio’s face, and Tobio licks the corner of his lips once before pulling Shouyou back for another kiss.

(Tobio barely makes it to his class on time.)

-

-

_+extra: six._

“So what exactly is it that I did?” Shouyou has to ask, though, on a day when Tobio is in a good mood, curled up between a pillow and a blanket on Shouyou’s bed.

“You didn’t do anything. It was a text.” Tobio answers, yawning. “It implied that you liked a girl and intended to take her out for dinner, or something. What happened to that girl, anyway?”

Shouyou makes a confused noise. “ _A_   _girl?_ That can’t be right. There was never any  _girl._ ”

Tobio stares at him, and slowly opens his mouth. “The text should be in your phone history, I think.”

And so they look, scrolling through the history of texts exchanged between Shouyou and Koushi-senpai, until they come across this:

_I can’t believe my sister knows! How did she know that I like Tobio?_

_Girls can be perceptive about these things._

_Was I too obvious? HOW DID SHE KNOW THIS IS DRIVING ME CRAZY._

_Don’t be silly. Just ask her. Invite her to dinner or something :)_

_Oh, that’s. Okay, that works. Thank you, senpai!_

****

-

fin

-

 

**Author's Note:**

> Yup, and that's it. I had a lot of fun writing these dorks so I hope you had fun as well reading about these dorks. :3c


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